rawhide report: 20040128 changes

[Mike A. Harris]

On Wed, 28 Jan 2004, Julien Olivier wrote:

>> > IMHO, abiword really belongs in Extras.
>> 
>> Then IYHO, so does the rest of GNOME Office, KOffice et all, by
>> extension?
>> 
>> :)
>
>I think the smiley isn't necessary. Fedora Core should only contain 1
>app for each task IMO (the one that is selected by default). All the
>rest should be in extras. And that includes KDE for example.

It's *definitely* not that simple nor hard-line of a decision 
process, and probably never will be.  There are _many_ factors 
that go into deciding what will be in core and what will not be 
in core.  Different packages may have different factors that 
contribute to their inclusion or exclusion, and a rule that 
causes one package to be excluded might not weigh high enough 
for another package depending on that own package's merits and 
other factors.

Removal of pine for example, did not set a rule that we now will 
remove all text based email clients.  Each and every application 
is subject to a variety of generic baseline qualifications for 
wether it should be in Core or not, as well as individual 
considerations based on the app itself, and other similar apps in 
the distribution, security, technical matters and other 
considerations, and that also includes community input as well 
of course.

The important point I'm trying to make though, is that no single 
rule can be hardline applied across all software, except for 
certain specific situations such as "legal issues" and whatnot.

We obviously want wherever possible to reduce application 
duplication of functionatlity, but not in a way major way that 
totally changes the entire project upside down, or sends 99% of 
users running looking for a new OS.

More rational suggestions are definitely welcome, and more likely
to be considered seriously than radical enigmatic
change-the-world ones.

It's a good idea before making a suggestion, to also go to the
http://fedora.redhat.com website and review the stated project
goals/mission statement material and determine if a particular
suggestion is in line with the project's published goals, or way
off base.

There are lots of good suggestions passing by on the list, which 
is nice to see, but yours falls short.



-- 
Mike A. Harris     ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris
OS Systems Engineer - XFree86 maintainer - Red Hat